Termination Orders(103)

If she had wanted the drive to be accessible to no one but herself, the password would be a random string of letters, numbers, and symbols, and guesswork would be a waste of time. But Morgan knew that this drive wasn’t only for her. It was insurance, something that she would want others to be able to access if she died. She had taken it out to give it to him as her last living act. Natasha had wanted him to have it. He tried to put himself in her situation. If he were giving this to someone as the last thing he did on this earth, he would damn well want to make sure they had the password. And the easiest way to do that would be . . .

To tell them. Of course. It was obvious; how could he have missed it? He typed in andrei, but he knew it was too short without even trying. But that, of course, wasn’t his full name. He carefully typed: andrei-vasiliyevich. He hit the Enter key. He fully expected an error message, but instead, a window opened with a long list of folders, each with a separate date on it. He was in.

He examined the files, running the cursor over each one as he scanned it. The earliest ones dated back ten years, but the bulk of them were more recent. He clicked on the last file, from only a few days previous, labeled with the date, time, and CIA.

He heard Natasha’s voice from the speakers. “I can do it. I can bring him down!”

“No. You failed, and now I’m sending Wagner to finish what you couldn’t.”

He stopped the recording. The voice was not Kline’s. It belonged to NCS Director Jeffrey Boyle.

Morgan sat there in shock. It was Boyle. Morgan had been played all along, from the moment Boyle had let him in on Cougar’s mission in Afghanistan. Boyle had leaked information to Nickerson and Natasha, and he must have bugged Plante, as he probably did his entire senior staff.

When he found out Plante was on to him, Boyle and his stooge, Nickerson, assigned T to take care of people who might implicate him—Plante, Cougar, Zalmay, and Morgan. It all fell neatly into place. Boyle had sent Wagner after Morgan, and when all his schemes had at last failed, he had set up Kline to take the fall. The bastard. But now Morgan had the evidence. Now he knew, and he’d make sure that Boyle would pay for what he did.

The phone rang, and Morgan looked at it as if it were a hissing snake. He picked up.

“I’m trying to reach Cobra.”

“That’s me,” he said.

“Mr. Cobra, please hold. It’s your daughter on the line.”

He waited a few seconds and then heard Alex’s quavering voice say, “Dad, it’s me.”

“Alex? Is something wrong? Is your mother there?”

“No. Dad, he’s got a gun.” She sounded like she was crying.

“Who has a gun? Alex, what’s going on?”

“I don’t know what he’s talking about, but he says you have to bring the chip, and that you have to come alone and not tell anyone or he’ll kill me. The ankle monitor—he says the code is 254766. He says to come to the barn at the Old Mill Road outside Arlington. Please, Daddy, please—!”

And someone hung up before she could say any more.

He heard Lowry’s footsteps, heading back into the room. Morgan stood up as he appeared at the door.

“I really needed this,” Lowry said, holding up a can of energy drink. Then he spotted the screen. “Hey, Cobra, what did you do there?”

But Morgan had already made his way behind him and deftly locked him in a sleeper hold. Lowry, whose natural response was not to struggle, was easily subdued and fell unconscious quickly.

Morgan set him down in the chair and then disconnected the chip from the computer and pocketed it. I give it to Boyle, and then what? he thought. He lets me and my family go? Not likely.

But what choice did he have?

He was about to walk out when he saw Lowry’s smart phone on the desk. He had a crazy thought, and a desperate plan began to form in his mind.

He had to do it. He had to go face off against Boyle. But he wasn’t going in empty-handed.





CHAPTER 47


Morgan spotted the grain silo first, towering above the trees, dirty white with rust peeking through the old paint. The air was quiet here, the noises of the city far behind. He stopped at the side of the road. Through the trees, he could catch glimpses of a run-down barn, and he wondered if there was a slaughterhouse here, and at what distance it was possible to hear the screaming of dying cattle. He decided to approach on foot and rolled to a stop.

Before he got out of the car, he reached into the glove compartment and pulled out his backup gun. Then he picked up Lowry’s phone from the passenger’s seat and looked at its glowing screen. God, he hoped his plan worked. He reached for the ankle monitor. Here goes nothing, he thought, as he reconnected the loop. It began blinking red, while emitting a high-pitched, droning buzz. Someone, somewhere now knew that he was far out of his designated perimeter.